I have to get this out of my system due to recent events and the never ending psychological abuse.
It’s an angry post and I struggled to hold back but I did.
I married Sandra in 1982, had three kids, Adam, Stephanie and Sophie, and divorced in 2003. We’d met in 1977 and started going out in 1979. We were together a long time.
By 2000 Sandra had amassed around £30,000 of debt.
In 2001 I discovered she’d stolen a credit card and cheque book belonging to me, spending over £6000, which I stupidly paid off for her.
In 2002 she was arrested for defrauding the Royal Bank of Scotland to the tune of £10,000 by taking a loan out in my name, not paying any of the monthly payments. This led to me being sent monthly reminders which I never received as she was stealing my mail.
She also implicated one of her closest friends in the fraud.
She was arrested and charged, blaming me for her arrest, leading to her never ending vicious and pernicious animosity from which I am still suffering over 20 years later.
Throughout our marriage she psychologically abused our three kids and myself, the abuse towards Stephanie being particularly galling. She groomed and brought Stephanie up to hate me.
Throughout our marriage Sandra continually threatened me with losing our kids.
This began a few months after Stephanie’s birth in 1988, when she told me “I’m going to leave and you’ll never see the kids again’. This was not an isolated remark, it was to become a pattern of behaviour over the course of our marriage. As the kids became older and were able to understand she would tell them ‘we’re going to get you a new dad’.
She was promoting hatred throughout our family, ensuring our kids would grow up expecting that, at some point, they would get a new dad.
This was a constant in my life, not a week going by without a threat, from 1988 right through to 2002 when she was forced to leave due to her poor financial management, theft and fraud.
Sandra concentrated much of her psychological abuse on Stephanie, taking any opportunity to turn her against me. She made her feel guilty and pressured her into showing loyalty only to her.
Her abuse of Stephanie was the catalyst for years of her abuse within our family.
This was covert narcissism and she was using triangulation to pit Stephanie against me.
Triangulation happens when a narcissist manipulates a relationship by using a third party in order to create conflict.
In our case Sandra was using Stephanie (termed in psychology The Golden Child), turning her against me (termed The Scapegoat), with the use of lies and negative ideation.
Many people don’t realise they’ve been triangulated until it’s too late and I’m one of those people.
The note in the first photograph I’ve posted is an example of Sandra’s psychological abuse. I found it under Stephanie’s pillow when Sandra was out working and I was putting the kids to bed. Stephanie was around 9 years old at the time. Yes, this is a note from a mother to her 9 year old daughter. The note in itself is emotional and psychological abuse of Stephanie. Child abuse.
Sandra was actively alienating me as a parent. Parental alienation is child abuse and those who engage in it are child abusers.
It makes a child believe they can only love one parent and must reject or hate the other, creating a conflict in loyalty. No child should ever feel the need to pick sides.
An alienating parent is characteristically a vengeful and narcissistic individual who feels threatened by the love and attachment between the alienated parent and the child.
Abuse and good parenting cannot coexist. You cannot traumatise and emotionally destroy the parent of your child and claim to be a good parent.
It’s sad when an ex loves to hate you more than they love their children.
Narcissistic abuse never leaves. It’s always there in some form and in my case that’s my kids, and there is always an event that brings it all back. Birthdays, Father’s Day, Christmas all bring flashbacks.
This has had a devastating effect on my life and recent events have really struck home.
In mid to late 2021 Adam, Stephanie and Sophie stopped talking to me. No reason given and no opportunity to find out why or for me to to give any explanation as to what I may have done wrong. I still don’t have a clue why they stopped talking. Stonewalling, ghosting and the silent treatment. Cancel culture from adults who should know better so I’ve no option but to use online channels to convey veracity.
These are three very emotionally immature adults.
In a call to Adam in October 2021, a violently angry call, he attacked me by being abusive and threatening, objecting to having contributed financially during the time he stayed with me, around eight or nine years. To be clear, he wasn’t forced to stay with me and I didn’t ask him to. The choice was his. I didn’t ask him for a contribution, he volunteered to pay our gas bill, £30 per month, when he got his first job, and then he volunteered to help with the mortgage when I was in financial difficulty due to a failing business.
He seemed to be telling me their fall out was over finances.
His alternative was to stay with his mum but the reason he came to stay with me initially was his hatred of his mum and his intolerance of her partner, combined with the fact that she was charging him more than £60 per week as a student to stay in her house.
To put perspective on this, based over a nine year period staying with me Adam contributed just over £8,000. Had he stayed with his mum for the same period he would have paid over £28,000. I hope he saved the £20,000 he would have given his mum and it helped him and Nicole with the deposit towards their first house. He certainly wouldn’t have been drinking Tennent’s Lager and gambling every night living with his mum, like he did living with me.
I’d never have thought he was so self entitled, a snowflake.
That is the only reason I was given from Adam, no explanation from Stephanie and none from Sophie.
It wasn’t Adam talking though, he was obviously repeating what had been drummed into his head and his comment at the time, ‘how can you take money from your son for living with you?’ begs the question, was Stephanie and Sophie being charged for staying with their mum and if not why not, given that Adam was? And if they were why was Adam criticising me when his mum was charging them all? Either way, it illustrates Adam’s stupidity and if his sisters were given free board and he wasn’t, at £60 per month he was obviously subsidising them. You could say he was mugged.
Adam hears what he wants to hear.
Adam’s anger that day was so violent he called the police to protect himself from what actions he may take (he admitted this to me later, in 2023). The police gave me a visit. He was effectively waisting police time. His anger indicates that this was an issue more than money. A rational person doesn’t get psychopathically angry over money and if there’s an issue why not discuss it with me? Sandra is a pathological liar and my suspicion and experience tells me she has said something outrageous and derogatory about me to them. Sandra is a person who would lie to destroy my life. I’ve witnessed her doing so.
It’s no coincidence that the issue arose around August 2021 when they all, with partners, had a family break with Sandra and her partner. Around the same time as Stephanie was planning a wedding and family, and Sophie was planning her engagement.
Adam later told me there was a collective decision to cut off my whole family (he started talking to me for a while again in 2023). The reason behind that is the sheer embarrassment Sandra would endure should she face my family, considering her multiple affairs, her fraud and the fact that, not only did she steal from myself and financial institutions but also from my father’s sister, a woman who was extremely friendly and helpful towards Sandra. Another person Sandra used and abused.
My family, particularly my mother and father were extremely good to Adam, Stephanie and Sophie, along with Sandra.
Adam doesn’t have a backbone and his strings are pulled by the women in his life. He is also particularly two faced. This is a chap who, along with Sophie, deems Stephanie’s partner a weirdo. Very duplicitous.
He continually tells me ‘you brought it on yourself’ but that’s a lack of credibility and a refusal to be forthright.
No Adam, I didn’t bring it on myself. No parent deserves a lifetime of listening to another parent telling their kids they will get a new dad or mum. That, Adam, is evil.
I would doubt Adam has had the courage to tell his mum she brought her arrest on herself.
Here’s something to think about Adam. The dictionary definition of a fact is ‘a piece of information presented as having objective reality.’ Meaning a fact has evidence that says it is real, no doubt about it. An opinion is ‘a view, judgement or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter.’ Hopefully you have the capacity to get your head round that.
When we last spoke you said you would never agree with me. Well what I’ve written here are facts, with available evidence, and opinions based on these facts. The same facts you agreed with in the letter I sent you in 2023.
Stephanie was groomed by her mother from an early age, Sophie was taken from me when she was nine years old, Sandra again attempting alienation, to the point she was in contempt of court and had to be warned. This was during family court proceedings, brought about only due to Sandra’s lust for revenge after her arrest.
Parental Alienation is real and in my experience not only confined to separation. The process of alienating me from Stephanie began when she was a child and continued throughout our marriage and persists.
A parent with the craving to destroy their ex spouse without consideration of the feelings of their children is an abuser.
Adam, Stephanie and Sophie are all aware of everything their mum did. I would talk to Adam about ‘getting a new dad’ but he would dismiss it. It’s little wonder though, as they were all brought up with that expectation, it was normal to them.
I was useful to Adam when he was staying with me at a far lower cost than residing with his mum. He didn’t complain when I bought him a full suspension bike. He didn’t complain when I paid over the odds for a dental procedure after he broke his teeth. He didn’t complain when I took him to play football week in, week out, only to stand on the sideline as he rarely got a full game. He didn’t complain when I bought him an expensive pool cue as his mum wouldn’t, despite her earning £60 per week from him at the time. And he didn’t complain when he came running to me for a lift to the pub on a Saturday night. No, he complains about me when his mother, sisters and partner pull his strings. And he complained about his mum charging him £60 per week, coming running to me. Adam has no integrity, no dignity and absolutely no backbone.
Of course, Stephanie didn’t complain every birthday and Christmas she had growing up. Or when she was taken on holidays. She was fine with me when I would drive her to her friend’s parties and to her football. She was fine when she came to help me photograph weddings, not long after her mum and I split. But she told me ‘if anything happens to mum I’ll never speak to you again’. Soon after, her mum was arrested. My anger at her mum’s abuse of her and myself is intolerable to her and deemed abusive but the knowledge of her mum stealing, lying and having affairs is acceptable, not to mention her mum’s psychological and narcissistic abuse of her own family. Stephanie did stop talking to me for several years then made up, telling me ‘I’m back now’. So what’s happened now Steph? I certainly didn’t do anything back in 2021, at least nothing you’ve made me aware of.
No complaints from Sophie either. No complaints when I picked her up early every Sunday after our split to take her horse riding and back home afterwards. No complaints when I bought her equestrian paraphernalia monthly. No complaints when I took her to the cinema or to the boating pond after I’d driven her home to ask her mum if it was ok. She was so fearful of what her mum would say that she wouldn’t make a decision without asking her. I had to regularly drive her home to ask her mum’s permission. Sophie was extremely fearful of her mum as a child. I’ve never had an issue with Sophie and, again, she hasn’t told me what the current issue is.
A family friend recently said to me, ‘I cannot fathom how the three of them haven’t sussed their mum’. The fact is Adam has. He recently told me ‘I know mum’s a liar and a very bitter woman’. Stephanie and Sophie? They are both very intelligent women but refuse to acknowledge that their mum’s actions are psychological abuse. Not just abuse targeted at me but also towards them, Stephanie in particular, who was groomed to hate me. Psychological Child Abuse, leading to Parental Alienation.
Incidentally, neither Adam nor Sophie had any issue with me after their mum’s arrest, just Stephanie. That in itself tells a story.
My mother passed away in March 2023. Adam, Stephanie and Sophie all refused to attend her funeral.
The day after her passing Adam again became violently verbally abusive in a phone call I made to him. Who does that after a bereavement?
Adam angrily told me they would pay their own respects to their Gran. How can you pay respect to someone you never respected in life? Their Grandmother and Grandfather were very generous and loving to them. Their Grandfather is in a home. Adam visited three times in 2023.
He fell out again in October 2023, calling me a liar, I expect because I told him of the violent abuse his mum suffered at the hands of her own father, who she told me forced her to kneel on marbles as a punishment when she was a child.
Covert narcissism, incidentally, is the type of narcissism most likely associated with an abusive childhood.
Stephanie and Sophie have never visited their Grandad.
The intention from their actions, like all emotional abusers, is to hurt.
Their Grandmother was extremely hurt by never meeting her Great Grandson, who Stephanie kept from her for no reason but to hurt, by Adam who she thought the world of, and by Sophie’s downright ignorance.
Their Gran’s passing and their Grandad’s confinement to a home are further vehicles for their emotional and psychological abuse.
Our kids had a good upbringing. A better upbringing than many, despite our financial challenges. Brought up by two parents, not one. A good upbringing despite Sandra’s challenging toxic behaviour.
Adam, Stephanie and Sophie, you are three very cold hearted, gutless and insidious people, devoid of empathy.
The next image is an excerpt from an interdict arranged by Sandra through her solicitor. Note that I eventually made a formal complaint about her solicitor as I became more and more disturbed by Sandra’s lies and accusations, particularly considering Sandra’s claim that she was encouraged by her solicitor to lie.
Sandra has never had black eyes and was never spat at, kicked, slapped or punched by me. None of her family, friends, working colleagues nor Adam, Stephanie or Sophie have ever seen Sandra with black eyes. The accusations can be proven to be false.
At one point I managed to talk to Sandra about her accusations and her response was, ‘Och, that’s just what solicitors do’, accusing her solicitor of encouraging her to lie to the Court. Hence my formal complaint about her solicitor.
That was the most upsetting paragraph of the interdict, a false claim of domestic violence designed to threaten my freedom and gain an upper hand in divorce proceedings. Unfortunately such false accusations diminish the genuine accusations of thousands of men, women and children who suffer real physical abuse but who are often not believed. Ironically many of these people suffer emotional and mental abuse at the hands of perpetrators just like Sandra.
Why the family courts accept accusations without any form of evidence is beyond me. It ruins lives and, worse, has led to suicide.
This is what my solicitor had to say about it:
‘I think it is most unfortunate that a party can raise proceedings on spurious grounds, can obtain interdicts where there is no threatening evidence and then seek and be granted an award of expenses. Basically, they have raised a spurious action and have been compensated, if not awarded for so doing’.
Regarding ‘bruises about her body’, I would query with her certain bruises she had around her torso. She would tell me that she received them at work while handling patients, lifting them onto beds, etc. She worked in geriatric wards and nursing homes as a nurse. I had no reason to question what she told me as it seemed plausible.
I was later to discover that she was telling Stephanie that I had inflicted her bruises.
I have my own thoughts as to how she received bruises around her torso, which I’ve noted on my website.
Sandra assaulted me three times during our marriage, once when she smashed a glass tumbler over my leg and I ended up in A and E. Fortunately she missed an artery. She also smashed an object over my head in front of Adam and Stephanie and elbowed me in the nose, trying to break it, when I tried to retrieve stolen mail. I still suffer nose bleeds.
Sandra was also the subject of a disciplinary hearing around 2001/02 while working as a nurse, having been alleged to have assaulted a resident by the nursing home she was employed at. Granted, she was under a lot of stress with the uncovering of her theft and credit card fraud, a fraud not yet uncovered and yet another affair.
She has a quick and violent temper.
Throughout our marriage Sandra had at least three affairs, pregnancies coming after two of them, one of those pregnancies being terminated. One of these affairs was with her best friend’s husband and one with a work colleague who’s partner would desperately call me asking me to keep Sandra away from him. The other I won’t name but I did speak to his wife. On top of these affairs I recently found out that she tried it on with one of my closest and oldest friends, a friend, who’s wife was a friend to Sandra.
She stole from me, she stole from financial institutions and she stole from my father’s sister.
Not once did I retaliate with anger or violence to these indiscretions, once paying off her credit card and on the other occasions trying to understand her and her actions.
My anger came from her psychological abuse of our family.
Aside from being a psychological abuser with signs of covert narcissism there are clearly traits of sociopathy.
Sandra’s behaviour is typically narcissistic. Throughout our marriage she was manipulative and coercive, particularly in her use of Stephanie. When she messed up with debt and theft and paid the price with her arrest her narcissistic rage came to the fore and vengeance ensued.
When, in 2021, I indicated a desire for a closer relationship with my kids I became a threat, Stephanie and Sophie talking about weddings and families exacerbating her rage. It was her time to isolate me, using her Flying Monkeys. My kids are Sandra’s Flying Monkeys, people used in a toxic relationship by a narcissist or abuser to carry out their edict, often without realising they are being used.
My kids have followed suit by also being psychological and emotional abusers, which is unsurprising, given their influence. Sandra has lost many friends and her sisters no longer talk to her. Adam, Stephanie and Sophie have been brought up to view this as normal behaviour. Watching perpetual fallouts between Sandra and her family and friends has made this attitude natural to them. Adam also treats his oldest and closest friends in the same way when it takes his fancy.
Once in a narcissistic relationship it never goes away.
Finally, during our marriage I was treated for reactive depression. At one point I asked my GP to refer me to a psychiatrist because I blamed myself. I asked Sandra to come along and realised then that my issue was Sandra’s gaslighting.
Interestingly, in early 2021, prior to their collective decision to cut me off I spoke to Sophie regarding my depression, along with the fact I’d never been introduced to any of their future in-laws, and yet she found it acceptable to make it more difficult for me when she realised I was having a hard time and saw I was struggling. That says it all about my kids.
I’m currently visiting my fifth counsellor in four years as the Police were so concerned about my situation they referred me to The Neuk in Perth. It won’t stop there as I’m undergoing 12 weeks of therapy, to wipe out the memory of Sandra’s psychological abuse of myself and of our kids and subsequently the never ending emotional and psychological abuse by my kids, and to try to look forward to what’s left.
It’s difficult though as Sandra has taken away the greatest moments of fatherhood. Seeing my grandson and seeing my children married, her narcissism encouraging Stephanie to take a position of alienating me as a grandparent, although there are no safeguarding concerns. My treatment of my own kids and my work involving families and kids is testimony to that, and Adam would never have come to stay with me rather than his psychologically abusive mum had he had any concerns.
My grandson is almost three years old and I have still to meet him. I’m sure there will be more.
Stephanie’s use of alienation and her willingness to follow in her mum’s footsteps is actually quite worrying, and should be to anyone with any relationship to her or her son. I’m testimony to that.
I can’t help but regret having kids with Sandra. She has used and abused them to destroy my life. They are, and always were, a gun against my head. She weaponised them.
It’s been suggested I’m suffering from CPTSD as I have sleepless nights and flashbacks to Adam, Stephanie and Sophie as children. I’m not convinced but I’ll find out soon.
I realised not long after the birth of Stephanie that Sandra is a very dangerous woman. She is psychologically abuser. A domestic abuser. Had I left her I’d never have seen our kids again. I loved my family and would never have left. Sandra used my love of my family against me.
Losing your kids and grandchildren to narcissistic and psychological abuse is akin to a bereavement.
An alienated parent endures traumatic grief instigated by the loss of a child who is still alive and cannot be mourned. It is a living bereavement caused by the alienating parent.
The deepest grief though, is realising that the person who vowed to love you is the one who damaged you the most.
Psychological abuse doesn’t half grind you down. You lose all hope. Then your pain turns to anger and you become the bad guy.
On the outside Sandra comes across as kind, charming and generous. She can be helpful and loving. But her kindness is a mask, every selfless gesture laced with manipulation, control and calculation.
She has an inflated sense of self and a lack of empathy.
It was almost impossible to have a collaborative and reciprocal relationship with her as she cannot function adaptively, never more apparent than since our split.
She clearly doesn’t have the emotional maturity to accept responsibility for her multitude of indiscretions.
She was the greatest friend to ‘L’ and then she stole her husband, ruining her marriage. She was a great friend to ‘S’ and then she implicated her in her fraud. She was a great friend to my father’s sister and she stole from her. She was my greatest friend before becoming an abusive wife and mother, a thief and a cheat.
And we were all great friends to Sandra.
She abused her position as a mother, as a wife and as a friend.
Her pathological lies and actions are evil beyond belief.
Never allow this to happen to you. If you recognise you are in a relationship like this get out and certainly get out before you have kids.
Some kids hate their dad because they only listened to their mum’s version. Well this, and my website, is my response to the Despicable 3.
www.kneelingonmarbles.co.uk
www.instagram.com/kneelingonmarbles
Some resources if you’re struggling with parental alienation or psychological abuse:
https://www.papaorg.co.uk
https://www.papaorg.co.uk/post/why-grandparent-alienation-is-a-loss-unlike-any-other?utm_campaign=155f840e-c065-4fa7-9128-dda5fdde0c1a&utm_source=so&utm_medium=mail&cid=8f2548b2-f54d-4d51-bb29-c3c6225f317b
https://paawareness.co.uk/
